Author: Liz Martin-Silverstone

Working as a lab manager

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
Wow. It’s been over a year since my last blog post. A lot has happened since then, though not a lot scientifically which is why I haven’t posted much. Not a lot of updates for me other than lots of (failed) applications, lack of publishing, and that little global pandemic throwing everything into disarray… One reason I’ve been pretty busy over the last while is that I had the opportunity to work full time as…

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Now a British-Canadian palaeontologist! Why I chose to get citizenship

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
It’s been a while since I’ve posted, primarily because I have been extraordinarily busy, and also because I haven’t felt like I’ve had much interesting to say lately. I’ll have some more science-related posts soon (I hope), but for now, I wanted to talk about something that’s been bugging me a lot lately: my reasoning for getting British citizenship. As some of you know, I recently became a British citizen. I applied in November, received…

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2018 – Year in Review

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
Seems like yet another year is drawing to a close. How do they keep passing so quickly? Stop that! Since it’s the end of the year again, I guess it’s time for another year in review about what I’ve been up to. 2018 was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Nothing particularly bad, but also nothing amazingly awesome. The good stuff: A couple of good things that happened this year – I published…

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Why I don’t want to move country

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
Recently, Nature published an article titled ‘Why you should move country‘, about the advantages of moving countries as academics. A study has shown that those who are more mobile get more citations, better collaborations, etc. This article sparked a discussion on Twitter about advantages and disadvantages of moving for academia, and there were many opinions and thoughts about it. While I agree that there are advantages to moving labs in order to work with new…

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Early tetrapod feeding

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
Well, I’ve managed to fail at my scicomm resolution for the year, which was to write at least one blog post a month. I missed out on September, but I’m back on it in October with an update on what I’ve been up to in the past few months. As some of you know, I’ve been spending a lot of the past year since finishing my PhD working off-and-on in an arthritis research lab, looking…

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Episode 95: Plants and Atmosphere

Liz Martin-Silverstone Multimedia
The interaction between plants and atmosphere forms the basis of the carbon cycle and is amongst the most important processes for maintaining life on the planet today. Photosynthesis removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in return forms the base of the food chain and produces the oxygen we, as animals, need to breathe. Equally, the composition of the atmosphere influences the climate and thus the availability of resources, governing where plants are able to…

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Palaeocast is up for a People’s Choice Award in Canada!

Liz Martin-Silverstone Multimedia
Science Borealis, a Canadian science blog community, along with the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada have announced the short-list for the 2018 People’s Choice Award: Canada’s Favourite Science Online, and Palaeocast has been nominated! We are honoured to be short-listed, and thanks to those at Science Borealis that . Please help us out by voting for us here. You can also read about the other nominations here. Although we’re not strictly Canadian, you do…

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Episode 94: Joggins Fossil Cliffs

Liz Martin-Silverstone Multimedia
The Carboniferous was a time of huge swampy forests, big trees, and lots of life both on land and in the ocean. One world-renowned fossil site from approximately 300 million years ago is the Joggins Fossil Cliffs, located on the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia Canada. Joggins is one of Canada’s five palaeontology-based UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and is one of the best places in this world to find fossils from this time period.…

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Flugsaurier 2018 – Los Angeles

Liz Martin-Silverstone Biology and Life Sciences, Environmental and Earth Sciences, General Science
I’ve just returned from a 2 week stint in California, where I had a bit of holiday visiting some family, and also attended Flugsaurier 2018, the semi-annual pterosaur conference. Held every 2-3 years, Flugsaurier focuses on the up-and-coming pterosaur research from around the world. It’s a small, specialist conference with 40-70 people typically who work on pterosaurs. I was involved in a minor capacity with the 2015 conference held in Portsmouth, and got sucked in…

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Episode 93: The History of Palaeontological Outreach

Liz Martin-Silverstone Multimedia
Palaeontology has an ability to grab the public’s attention like no other subject. Perhaps it’s the size and ferocity of something like a T. rex, or maybe it’s the alien nature of something like Hallucigenia. Irrespective of whatever it is that makes the subject interesting to any given individual, it’s important because palaeontology is a great gateway into STEM subjects and is, in itself, one of the few ways in which we can understand about the evolution…

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